“We are the new creatures of the new times. We inhabit new spaces, speak in new languages, move in new manners, use new words, have new bodies.

Yet we are the new. We see you, we follow you, we mirror you, we study your movements and we coordinate our bodies to yours. We continue to speak to you even when you’ve left. Because we are here and elsewhere, nowhere and everywhere.

We are generated by the butterfly-bird who flies around us, flapping its large wings, dangling its long legs and following the currents of the light breeze caused by your presence. Occasionaly the butterfly-bird sheds a tear, a musical drop which falls down at the sound of a Guzheng melody while it opens itself to give life to each one of us.

Our bodies are in a constant process of becoming: ever-changing creatures, we are figures, spectres, beings who have a voice who talks to anyone who wants to hear it. We are the mellow melon man, the legged fish, the one-legged arum lily, the quasi-nazar, and many others. You may recognise some of our features, have the vague impression that you’ve seen us before, maybe in a different configuration and in a different consistency. Maybe in a museum? In an ancient print? In a sci-fi film? In a computer game? Who knows how many times and in how many places we’ve met.

We are born to communicate. We have this absolute need to constantly send out messages to the world: sentences, thoughts, feelings, ideas, jokes, which are released from our minds and whose existence survives us.

We live to stream our new lives live.”

Created by artist Angelo Plessas, EverythingHappensAsItShould.com is an installation specifically conceived for the passengers that everyday use the Athens International Airport. The installation is based on a website, everythinghappensasitshould.com, which consists of a virtual environment in which a birdlike figure gives life to many creatures that appear and disappear according to the presence of visitors around them. When activated by the presence and movement of passers-by, these creatures tweet out clouds with messages that contain the word “nature”. By doing so, the installation puts in evidence the interconnectedness between the physical world we move in and the digital one that permeates all the realms of our lives, in which all our steps and actions have an effect on the amount of data and information that is constantly being generated and circulating online.

The infrastructure that guarantees online communication is unseen and unknown to most, often giving the impression of being an ecological, clean and environmental-friendly mode of exchanging data and information. But sending an email consumes an average of 4gr of CO2e (Carbon Dioxide equivalent), and 2,4 millions of emails are sent per second, 205 billions per day, and 74 trillions per year. This means that 9,6 CO2e tons are emitted per second, 820 thousand Tons of CO2e per day and 296 million tons of CO2e per year, simply due to email exchange. The material side of the digital realm, and its impact on our planet, appears all of a sudden very concrete and problematic.

Not being moralistic neither judgemental, the cloud messages sent by the creatures than inhabit everythinghappensasitshould.com appear as timely invitations for a reflection on how technology and nature are folded into one another, digital and natural environments being part of this same world we live in.